BabysRus? What is that?

I think he meant a Baby Ruth. hehe

And what brought on this declaration John? A little chocolate overload? :)
Never say never.

I couldn't live without chocolate...she says as she types with a bag of chocolate chips and a hot chocolate beside her.

I should have typed Babies"R"Us. I am refering to the video adds.

John

John,
Whats up I am thinking about polo shirts. I just bought a new tower it is supposed to get rid of all the unwanted ads. But I keep getting polo!!!! It is enough to make me aggravated also... Hey what do you have regarding bellpeppers in the gh. Newbies wanting to know this info. Please start a new thread about this.......... Can we even try the peppers??????? As always humble servant hehehe

Oh I see.....you're getting pop-up ads. I rarely get any of them because of my virus protection and haven't seen the ones you refer to.
They are very aggravating though and I have sworn to never do business with the companies that use them.
They seem to instill the same feelings in a lot of people-I wonder why companies chose to annoy us so much.

If you switch to Mozilla Firefox you don't see any ads. It comes with an effective ad blocker.

I don't know how long this will stay or if they will kick me out but here goes. I found a neat web cite, give it a try. thegardenforums dot org/

John

That forum has a fabulous cactus and succulent forum (I lurk there too) but unfortunately their greenhouse forum is very new, and it doesn't get many folks posting. I wander a lot of gardening forums (not sure I should mention them here either, lol) and they all seem to have their strengths and weaknesses. This is one of the most active greenhouse forums I've found...
Sheri

"I wonder why companies chose to annoy us so much"...

I actually called some of those companies that sponsor the pop ups and asked that question. The answer was that they contract out advertising and they have no control over how they advertise. Most are genuinely surprised at where the ads comeup, but when i explained that i will not be buying their product, EVER, the usually are quite apologetic. I will always email the companies to let them know how much a pain in the bottom drain they are.

Poppa

Foe every one person Poppa that complains the account agencys count it as ten people. Good job letting them know.

That would be petty if you couldn't mention other great sites.
Especially if they're not commercial.
I belong to backtocountrylife dot com
They're great people, More than just gardening
NO popups, ever.
Dave

Just to play devil's advocate....Those ads are what allows you to have a place like Gardenweb in the first place! Without the ads (unless Gardenweb changes their whole business philosophy), Gardenweb will close. The advertisers are actually paying for you to have the privilege to use this site.

A more responsible way to complain might be to contact Gardenweb and ask them to find a way to present the ads in a less annoying way. I think if enough people complain about the way the ads are presented instead of about the ads all together, something constructive might be accomplished.

Besides all that, you really should try Firefox with adblock. I haven't seen a popup ad on Gardenweb in probably a year. I don't even get any of the animated ads. And, this browser is much better than IE in my opinion.

brandon7

Check out http://thegardenforums.org/, Its less than a Year old and growing. The forums are much easier to use and brouse. Also there are no ads of any kind.

John

I've been to that site a few times as well as some of the others. They're OK, but just not a substitute for Gardenweb (at least yet). I still get more info/interaction for my surfing time here. Besides that, I don't have any problem with ads at all now, so there's no reason to give up any content.

I have seen this topic time and time again. A GW member named fratelli_can came up with a very effective fix for the pop ups.

Pam

Here is a link that might be useful: Block those pop up ads!

Here's the problem. The site is so graphics intensive.
I did a complete save on this page and it ended up being over 300k. THAT'S ENORMOUS in my opinion.
Even after disabling ALL the pop-ups, it's still 200k.
Now for all of you on DSL and cable, that may be fine. But I don't have high speed. It takes me over 2 mins to load GW pages sometimes.

In comparison:
http://thegardenforums.org/ : 88k - 36 sec No adds/popups

http://backtocountrylife.com/forum/ 48k - 18 secs No adds/popups

BTW, Web hosting is not that expensive. THAT many GW ads are unnecessary.
This is why I frequent other forums more.
brandon7, The ads probably don't pay for gardenweb, they probably pay for iVillage. There are many great site that have NO ads (2 were mentioned). Sure it can supplement. A lot of sites will ask for donations, or they have a store front to offset the costs, but you're not obligated to donate or buy. Remember, GW is a commercial site (for profit). Most forums are not. They are just people with the same interests. IMHO

Pushindirt, without the ads, iVillage would not keep Gardenweb around. I think most people realize this when they think about it.

What I don't understand is why some people stick around and post things on Gardenweb if they are convinced that there are other boards that are better. It's a free country, so if one doesn't want to find a solution on this site, and they know of better sites, why do they stay here? It's one thing to ask for ideas or a solution to a problem, but it's another to just stick around to whine.

Brandon

The more information you get on a subject, the better off you are. There are four boards that I frequent often. And I get good information from all four. When you are concentrating on a subject it is very frustrating to have it disappear and a video add take its place. There is such a thing as being reasonable. I have tried other browsers and popup blockers which the additional overhead on the browser slows it down.

John

That is exactly why I'd ... "contact Gardenweb (iVillage) and ask them to find a way to present the ads in a less annoying way."

Tell them what you just told us! If enough people do, I think they might listen. The problem is not the advertisers, it's the iVillage idiots that don't seem to realize how annoying the roll-overs and pop-ups are to many users. If half the people that wrote about it in the forums would email iVillage directly with the above complaint, I think the problem would probably have already been fixed.

Or you can all switch to Mozilla Firefox and never see another popup, roll-over etc. MFirefox is free.

Good point, but I don't want to disable pop-ups. There are some sites I go to that utilize them. One place I shop for clothing uses them to display larger images for inspection. I like that. I don't want to disable all my Flash, Java, Pop-up, etc because of ONE site.
But it isn't just the pop-ups. TWO flash animations in one page?
That's a bit much. As I said in my earlier post. With pop-ups disabled, it's still over 200k to load.
And if you edit the "hosts" file like pkponder posted a link to, You will have problems on other sites especially if you have Net Nanny or K9Web protection installed. It will automatically block you from sites that have these URLs.
I don't mind ads. Sometimes they're an evil necessity. Our gripe is the Amount and the intrusive way they're displayed especially on THIS type of site. Forums are typically not profit generating.

Well, you've almost convinced me to stop sending those pop-up ads to your computer, but I'm gonna have to think about it. Let me mull it over a little while, and we'll see.

I am never going to wear underwear again!

:)

I read a lot of online forums too. Like John, I think the more info the better...or as I say, you can never have too many smart friends! I will say that none of the other forums I frequent has the level of annoying ads this one does, and some of those are free forums with no subscription fees. But for now, the sparkling conversation here is worth the annoyance of the ads. ;-)

Chris, if I lived in zone 4, I'd really reconsider a vow to boycott underwear. At least until spring.